Barriers to Equality in Academia:
Women in Computer Science at MIT

Prepared by female graduate students and research staff in
the Laboratory for Computer Science and the Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory at MIT

February 1983

In my view, this is the most useful report ever written
in terms of its potential to improve the environment for
members of under-represented groups in academia.
Rather than focusing on egregious examples of harrassment
(the staple of "let's avoid lawsuits" presentations),
this report focuses on the million and one small ways
in which even the best intentioned of us inadvertently
create environments that are not conducive to the
career development of women, and, by extension, members
of other under-represented groups.

This 1983 report is available for viewing
in Adobe Acrobat PDF format (free Acrobat reader available
here).

N.B. It should go without saying that the computer
science area at MIT deserves enormous credit for
confronting -- nearly 20 years ago -- a problem that all
of us share. If this report signals something about the
computer science area at MIT, it is that the environment
there is better than elsewhere, not worse. We all still
have a lot of work to do.

START HERE -- The easiest
way to access the report online is through the hyperlinked Table
of Contents available through this link.

Note also the internal and external resources available
to University of Washington faculty, staff, and students:
University-wide resources listed
here,
CSE resources listed
here.